Abe Reles

Abe Reles (10 May 1906-12 November 1941) was a Murder, Inc. hitman and later a government witness, incriminating Louis Buchalter, Frank Abbandando, Mendy Weiss, Louis Capone, Harry Strauss, Bugsy Goldstein, and Harry Maione, leading to their deaths. In revenge, Frank Costello had him killed, throwing him out a window, getting newpaper attention as "the Canary Who Could Sing, but Couldn't Fly".

Biography
Reles was born in New York City to an Austrian Jewish family, his father working as a knish vendor after the Great Depression. He went to school until the 8th grade, and hung out around pool rooms and candy stores, and later joined his friends Bugsy Goldstein and Harry Strauss in criminal activities, arrested in 1921 for stealing $2 worth of gumballs from a machine.

Reles was a cold-blooded, psychopathic killer who used an ice pick as his weapon-of-choice, giving his victims cerebral hemorrhages. Although he was a Prohibition bootlegger, he rarely touched alcohol. However, this did not stop his violence and hot temper: Reles beat a car wash attendant for failing to remove a smudge for his car and once killed a parking lot attendant for not getting his car in time. He got his nickname for his strangulation methods, a name that was shared with Max Zwerbach.

In the 1920s, Reles and Goldstein worked for the Shapiro Brothers gang in committing murders. However, when he was sentenced to two years in jail, the Shapiros did not help him, so he swore revenge. Because he was friends with George Defeo, he had connections with Meyer Lansky, and took over the slot machine business from the Shapiros with his aid, in return for helping him take Brownsville and Ocean Hill. One night, the Shapiros attempted a hit on the three, but they survived, while Meyer Shapiro raped Reles' sister after beating her.

In 1931, Reles killed Irving Shapiro outside of his apartment, and Meyer Shapiro was shot in a tenement building's basement. In 1934, Willie Shapiro was buried alive. These killings added to the series of crimes that Reles was under investigation for, and in 1940, he testified against his friends as a government witness. Seven Murder, Inc. people, including Goldstein and Strauss, were executed.

Death
Reles was held in an apartment under NYPD protection so that nobody could harm him while he testified against his former comrades. Frank Costello, however, got a key in the hole; he bribed Charles Burns $100,000 to kill Reles. Burns threw Reles out of his window, killing him, and eliminating the witness. His death was said to be an accident or an escape attempt.